


broken-hearted defeat

by pepsicola



Series: Showdown [3]
Category: South Park
Genre: Death by a Thousand Cuts, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23744668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepsicola/pseuds/pepsicola
Summary: The repetition of the week leaves Kenny weary; he longs for someone he can no longer be with and someone else who is out of his hands and out of his limit. The only way to ease his pain his by drowning out his sorrows.
Relationships: Henrietta Biggle/Kenny McCormick, Kenny McCormick & Butters Stotch, Kenny McCormick/Butters Stotch
Series: Showdown [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675960
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	broken-hearted defeat

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to go up a lot sooner but I kept forgetting.

Once he felt the throbbing at the back of his skull begin to ebb away, Kenny got to his feet. He dusted off the thighs of his jeans and sighed loudly, flexing his fingers.

After the Butters fiasco, he’d forgotten why he even was passing by Cartman’s house in the first place. But then he’d looked down at his left arm and saw his tattoo staring right back at him. Henrietta’s handwriting. Eternal.

The lie really put the cherry on top of the immense despondency he already was feeling.

Kenny shuffled to his left. Henrietta’s house seemed so tall and menacing. It shouldn’t be, he told himself, since the house was _blue._

It was like he enjoyed putting himself through pain every time he got off work. Walking by her house reminded him of all the good times they had in there. Their first kiss. The time he gave her that necklace for Christmas. The birthday nights he spent there. The night they returned from their first real date and he laid her down on the bed.

Kenny scowled at himself. This is why he walked past her house. To _reminisce._ To wonder what he could’ve done differently to keep her from leaving him.

But no matter how many times he walked past her house and thought about it, he always came to the same conclusion—they’d never live past prom night.

Kenny finally got himself moving. He dragged his feet down the sidewalk, his hands buried deep in his pockets. He watched the house from the corner of his eye as it grew taller and bigger, expanding until it filled his entire peripheral.

He stopped, standing in the shadow of the house, facing its door and windows.

One window in particular his eyes were drawn to. The upper window on the right side. Black curtains were pulled over the glass. Kenny couldn’t see in. There was nothing to look at. Yet he stood there and stared. Unblinking and absentminded.

It could have been his imagination—it probably was—but the curtains twitched like they’d been disturbed.

Kenny started, snapping out of his trace. He scrutinized the window for any more movement. There was none. All in his head. Forever in his head.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. He needed to stop hoping that the curtains would open and Henrietta would be there staring back at him.

No matter how many times he walked past her house, the curtains would continue to move and sway, but they would never open.

Kenny resumed walking again, feeling more somber than he had been when he first showed up on the street. He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets until he could feel the lining pressing against his knuckles. His chin hung between his shoulders. He couldn’t even hold up the weight of his own head.

He watched the cracks in the sidewalk pass him by as his feet took him back home. He let his mind drift off. Making it stay would use up the last of his energy.

He allowed himself to wonder about Butters.

What had Cartman said to make Butters blow a fuse like that? Cartman easily provoked anyone, but he had the hardest time with Butters. Mostly it was because he didn’t try. He’d stopped trying to get Butters mad in seventh grade when something went wrong with the universe and suddenly Cartman and Butters were falling for each other.

Kenny shuddered. It could’ve been because of how haunting it was to him that fate would give Butters to a monster like Cartman. Or maybe it was because it made his mouth flood with a bitter taste knowing he only pretended to support Cartman and Butters.

They did great things for each other, sure. Cartman was less of a dick. Cartman was happier. Cartman developed a gentler side. But it was all Cartman who benefitted from the relationship. Kenny hadn’t seen anything that benefitted Butters.

But maybe Butters was also greatly impacted and Kenny just didn’t see it.

After all, he didn’t know Butters like he used to. Not anymore.

All Kenny could really see was that Butters was stolen from him. That was probably all his mind was allowing him to see.

That was a bad idea. Thinking about Butters was a bad idea. He felt worse. The feet he lifted felt heavier with each step.

He had arrived a street away from the train tracks. Few cars were still passing through the street that was parallel to the tracks. He stopped and waited for the walk signal.

Groaning, Kenny rolled his head back so he was staring at the sky. He stared at the green traffic light, waiting as a single car passed.

Asking the open air, the car getting further away, the green traffic light above him, Kenny mumbled, “Will it ever be all right?”

The traffic light was silent. It turned red instead. He scoffed. What a reassuring answer. He lifted his head so he could walk through the crosswalk.

He was walking through the threshold of his house soon enough. Kenny cast a sour look around the dirty living room. Cluttered kitchen. Scuffed floors. Ripped up couch. Cracked TV. A house that never felt like home.

Kenny was making his way towards his room when an unwanted thought popped up in his mind: Did he only detest Cartman and Butters’ relationship because he’d lost his own and he was _jealous_ that Cartman was lucky enough to find someone like Butters?

Kenny felt bile rise up his throat. He couldn’t be. That was wrong. He was a horrible friend if that was true.

He told himself it _wasn’t_ true as he hurried into the kitchen and tore open the refrigerator. It was empty. Like always.

Growling, Kenny slammed the door shut with little regard for the way the whole fridge rattled precariously.

He flew through the cupboards of the kitchen like a flurry. His eyes were ablaze. In the cupboards were plates and cups and bowls. Open cereal boxes. Poptarts. Empty boxes of snacks that had yet to be thrown away.

None of it was what he was searching for.

_It has to be here. It has to be here somewhere._

Kenny opened the last cupboard on the top row. Sitting half empty was a shiny bottle of his dad’s cheap vodka.

Kenny snatched it and unscrewed the cap. He dropped it to the floor as he lifted the bottle to his lips.

The gulps he swallowed down burned his nose and throat. It burned in a good way.

 _Forget,_ he told himself. _Just forget._

Kenny went straight for his room. He momentarily set the bottle down on his dresser to kick off his shoes and jacket before picking it up again and collapsing into bed with it, the wall propping him up.

He drank until the vodka was gone and he was seeing double. No, triple. No, double. Or was he seeing in fours?

He chuckled at the way his door seemed to wiggle as it transformed from two to one, back to two again.

Suddenly, he couldn’t discern the swaying of his door from the swaying of his body.

Was he swaying? Was he imagining it?

He felt sluggish as he tilted his head. His head felt like it weighed tons. Before he knew it, Kenny was completely tipping over to the right. His head hit his pillow. He was out cold.

| | |

Henrietta was leaning over Kenny, the tips of her long black hair tickling his nose. Hanging around her neck was a gold chain with his name on it. It swung back and forth, always glinting in the semidarkness. Kenny chuckled, running his fingers through her hair to push it out of her face. Henrietta’s dark lipstick was smudged across her chin from his previous kisses. She helped him sit up. They were in her bed. She was in his lap with him already inside her.

Kenny realized his hands were already in the center of Henrietta’s back. Her shirt was off and she only had her bra on. He slid his hands up along her spine, inching his fingertips under the strap. He effortlessly unhooked her bra and slipped it from her body.

He shot her a dopey smile. “Angel. I’ve missed this,” he drawled. His eyes fell shut as he dipped his nose towards hers.

Henrietta eagerly fixed her mouth on his. The tip of her tongue pressed to Kenny’s, making him groan. Her hips rocked to the beat of the kiss. He couldn’t resist giving in to the friction. Her nails curled into the back of his neck. She panted hard against his lips.

He nuzzled his face against the soft spot under her jaw. He caught her gold chain between his teeth. “Fuck, princess, you feel so good,” he breathed.

Henrietta’s breath hitched. The points of her acrylics dug in further into his skin. “Sober up, daddy,” she whispered into the shell of his ear.

Henrietta kept going, but Kenny halted. The corners of his lips began to tug into a frown. Something about that wasn’t right. Henrietta was breathy and moaning—there was nothing wrong with that—but her whispered words were unfamiliar.

He mulled over her words. The “daddy” wasn’t out of place, but “sober up”…

Kenny pulled away. When he left the orbit of Henrietta’s flowery aroma, it was no longer Henrietta in front of him—it was Butters.

They were at a park, and it was pouring rain all around them. Kenny’s arms were around Butters’ waist, and Butters was staring up at him. Kenny couldn’t look away. His blue eyes caught the faded ethereal light. His outline did too. Everything that touched him was gleaming. The water that ran down his face was liquid gold.

All Kenny could do was gawk in silence.

Butters reached up, about to sweep Kenny’s hair out of his eyes, but Kenny stopped him by taking his wrist in his hand. The movement took both of them by surprise. Something in Kenny, an outside force, told him to lean down to Butters. Slow, with rainwater running through their clothes. Quiet, with only the falling water pounding against the sidewalk.

The kiss was delicate. Kenny’s lips barely touched Butters’, but it was held there. Butters’ lips were warm. All of him was warm. The heat emitting off of his body was chasing the chill of the rain from Kenny.

Butters’ wrist slipped from Kenny’s slackened grasp. He placed his hand on Kenny’s cheek and brought himself closer so more than their lips were touching.

Kenny could feel himself begin to glow too. The rain that hit them fizzled as it evaporated from the heat coming from both of them. Steam rose up from their skin.

_Sober up, daddy._

Henrietta’s voice was sharp as a knife in his mind.

_Sober up, daddy._

Abruptly, Kenny broke the kiss and stumbled away from Butters.

Butters stared in shock at Kenny for a second. Then he began to cry. His wails were piercing. Thunder shook the earth and lightning flashed through the sky. Butters cried harder.

_Sober up, daddy._

Kenny looked down at his hand that had been around Butters’ wrist. Now he held Henrietta’s chain with his name on it. As he watched, horrified, the necklace began to melt, leaking from his palm, turning black as it neared the ground.

Another sharp, shrill sob came from Butters’ throat. Kenny’s neck snapped up back to him. More lightning flashed, closer each time. The thunder was loud.

“Look what you did, Kenny,” Butters cried. “Eric’ll be real mad at you when he finds out. You just wanna ruin everything I have ‘cause you’re bored and lonely. You’ll never win.” Lightning struck Butters, but the lightning stuck, crawling over his body.

_Sober up, daddy._

Kenny jolted, seeing a bleeding black, wavering form of Henrietta from the corner of his eye. When he looked where she had been, though, she wasn’t there.

There was a thudding in the air, increasing with each beat.

“You’ll never win,” Butters was repeating. “You’ll never win. You’ll never win.” He scowled. The lightning brightened. Kenny averted his eyes. Spots danced in his vision. He blinked hard to be rid of them.

The thudding was rapid. The rain shifted to match the vibrations of it. There was too much noise. The thudding. The rain and rolling thunder. Butters’ repetitions. The lighting crackling from Butters’ skin.

Kenny put his hands over his ears. It did little to drown out the sound. He could feel his mouth moving, yelling for it to stop, but there was no sound of his words. They were washed away by the noise around him.

_Sober up, daddy._

_Sober up, daddy._

_SOBER UP, DADDY._

Kenny shot up in bed. There was a scream dying on his lips. His chest was heaving up and down. His heart was beating fast and loud in his ears.

His stomach was queasy and his head was spinning.

Kenny surveyed his surroundings, pinching his arm to make sure he was no longer dreaming. He was in his room. His blanket was twisted between his legs. At his foot was an empty glass bottle of vodka.

Seeing the label made Kenny feel sick. He ran to the bathroom, nearly tripping on the way there, to throw his guts up into the toilet.

Getting drunk was never enough. By now, waking up screaming, running to the bathroom, and regretting his actions with his head in the toilet were Kenny’s Friday morning routine. His dreams were just altered flashbacks brought about by his poor Thursday night attempts to forget his agony by falling asleep wasted.

The first flashback was of the third time he’d gone to fuck Henrietta after they’d broken up. He’d been bored and lonely, and couldn’t resist her offer at going over to her house to visit her. Her body provided him temporary comfort. The only difference between reality and the flashback was that she’d never told him to sober up when they’d been fucking in real life. She’d only told him to go harder, daddy.

For some reason, no matter how many times he rationalized with himself, there was always something off with his flashbacks. It was different each time so he could eventually pinpoint the wrongness, and that would transition him into the flashback with Butters.

Kenny groaned. He hated seeing that moment because it made him feel like a homewrecker. He didn’t want to go through it again, but his sluggish mind wouldn’t listen.

That flashback was of a rainy day at the park in junior year, when Kenny had thought about kissing Butters. He’d never done it. Their noses had been close, and they were staring at each other like they might, but their senses returned to them and they pulled apart after the realization of their closeness. At the time, Kenny had been very aware that they were both in relationships, and he didn’t want to ruin that. He was happy with Henrietta. Butters was happy with Cartman.

But now he was bored and lonely. He was destructive. It was morning now, and he had neither Butters nor Henrietta. Butters was off limits. Henrietta no longer wanted him. He had nobody.

He wasn’t okay, and he didn’t know if he could go on pretending he was. But he would have to. For himself. For his parents. For Karen and Kevin.

Kenny kept his head in hovering over the murky water of the toilet bowl until the nasty feeling passed. When it did, he stood and flushed the toilet. He brushed too hard. It left his teeth aching after.

This was worse than dying, he believed. At least the pain of dying eventually went away, but this pursued on and on with the same determination that death chased after him with. Only this time, death didn’t want to take him so easily. It didn’t want a car slamming into him, or a gunshot going through his skull.

Instead, until he could accept that he’d never have Henrietta or Butters, death would cut him up too many times. Little nicks in his skin that ran deep. When he finally gave in, then he would die. It would be a death by a thousand cuts.

If only he could accept the truth before he would be shredded to ribbons.

In his room, Kenny checked the time. It was one in the afternoon. He had work soon. Drearily, he went through his closet. He was still wearing the clothes he’d worn yesterday. It was shameful.

Kenny found a black button-down with three-quarter sleeves. He took off his shirt and tugged on the button-down. He only buttoned the middle three, exposing his chest to the warm summer air that was steadily creeping into his room as the sun rose higher. He rolled the sleeves up to above his elbows. Seeing his tattoo brought a wave of nausea and sadness over him.

He found a pair of striped shorts. He put them on. He tucked one flap of his button-down into the waist of his shorts. The other he let hang.

He slid on his round copper-wire sunglasses to hide the dark purple bags under his eyes.

He checked himself out in the mirror. His hair was sticking up from rolling around in bed during his dreams. But he looked amazing. Beach-ready and stunning. He only dressed like this—so spiffy and nice—to kill the time he had before work. When he wasn’t doing something he thought, and his thoughts were never good.

And, of course, he dressed so nobody would be able to tell he was emotionally distraught. Behind his sunglasses and dressy clothes, nobody would see how he faked his smile and his laugh and any sign of happiness he displayed.

Kenny left the house after taking a pill for his headache. He even debated taking more than one just to see if it would kill him. He decided not to.

His house was as empty as it had been when he’d stumbled home from taking the long way home.

Kenny took that path again—the long way—to work just so he could pass by Henrietta’s house like he did every time he went to and from work.

He neared Henrietta’s house. The first thing he sought out was her window. The curtains were open.

After work, he’d actually knock on her door this time. She would answer it like she did every Friday evening, dressed in only a silk robe that hid the lacey lingerie that was beneath it. She would lead him up to her room by the hand, and he would watch the way her ass moved as she went up the steps. In her bedroom, she would push him to the bed so he could watch in awe as she dropped the robe. She would crawl over him and touch him until there wasn’t a part she _hadn’t_ touched. She would run her hands down his chest and linger over his heart, further to his hips—all of his body—so it appeared that she had his love cradled in the palm of her hands.

And he’d wake up the next morning at peace because he was pretending everything was as it had been before prom night. Nothing would sting because momentarily, he had forgotten how wide-eyed and stupidly hopeful he’d been when he first fell in love with her. He’d tell himself he was still her addictive drug instead of having to live with the knowledge of their shredded plans for the future.

On Main Street, Kenny spotted Butters and Cartman leaving an ice cream shop. Cartman had a cone and Butters had a cup. They were talking and smiling and laughing.

Kenny grit his teeth at the shrinking forms of Butters and Cartman walking away. He despised this small town because no matter where he went, he always managed to see Butters and be reminded of everything he’d lost.

Butters, too, had taken up so much of Kenny. All of the songs they’d listened to, all the movies they’d watched—they used to have a whole world they’d built together. But that world had one rule: to remain in their friendship. Unfortunately, this was the one flaw. Butters hated rules, so there was bound to be a time where he managed to escape their cozy world in search of a place where there were no rules. And that place was Cartman.

All of the time and everything else in between that Kenny had shared with Butters, just for it to end up like this. Butters and Henrietta, who had torn his spirit apart in half, and after everything, he still trusted them to not break it.

They were content, and all Kenny could do was walk down sidewalks he’d walked down millions of times before, like he was a phantom haunting the site he’d been viciously murdered. He had no other purpose. Just unfinished business.

He hurried to the crosswalk. He stopped next to the pole of a traffic light. He looked up at the green glow.

Just like every Friday, he asked the traffic light as if it would answer him, “Will it be all right?”

The light flickered yellow.

_I don’t know._


End file.
